Conquering Horse (16 page)

His heart calmed down.

After a time the northern lights faded slowly away, sinking back to their sources in the blue north. Stars reappeared. All was again as it had always been.

Toward morning a cramp settled in his left thigh, deep, immediately under the black zigzag line he had painted on himself. It burned him. He suffered it because he fancied the clutching knot sent warmth through the rest of his body.

The third day the sun rose bright and clear again. He staggered to his feet. When he tried to dance a greeting to the sun, his left thigh buckled under him and he fell to the ground.

“Father,” he groaned, “I am very weak. You do not send me the true dream. When shall it be?”

He got up again. Slowly he stretched his limbs and tried walking. His thigh held.

He limped along the rim, carrying the red pipe. Looking down he had the odd feeling that the butte had risen in the night. Objects on the prairie below seemed smaller than usual. When he came to the gap on the south rim he saw Circling Hawk with the horses. Circling Hawk was now hardly larger than a daisy head and the horses but glossy beetles.

He was glad to see his ugly friend still in attendance. He remembered how Circling Hawk had held him in his arms and warmed him after he had nearly drowned in the Great Smoky Water. He realized at last that Circling Hawk was truly an older
brother to him. He wept about it. He swore to reward him for it. He opened his arms as if to embrace what had once been his hated rival. Then, before Circling Hawk could look up, he turned abruptly away. Both Moon Dreamer and his father Redbird had told him to walk in a remote place, crying alone to Wakantanka, neither eating nor drinking, nor holding converse with any man, until the vision came.

After he had blackened his face, he swept a foursquare place near the pyramid of stones on the west side. Perhaps the power on the red side of the world would carry his cries and lamentations to the Thunders. He puffed as he worked. He picked up every loose pebble, plucked away every growing thing. Then, sighing, he lay down, heels almost to the rimrock, face up, arms crossed over his sunken belly.

He waited, patiently.

He no longer felt hunger. His stomach was silent. Nor thirst. His tongue, after the many drinks of cold air, lolled at ease in the back of his throat. He felt dully satisfied.

Dozing off, he dreamed. He had been out hunting with his new brother Circling Hawk. They were very happy with a great killing of buffalo cows. Now the Yankton mothers could make many tepee covers. They placed the bloody humps of meat in a circle on the grass and then lay down to sleep inside the circle. They snored. While they slept, a brownish male snake crept out of the river bottom, and hissing at the red humps of meat, slipped up to where they lay. “Do not eat me,” No Name cried. “I am the son of Redbird and my helper has promised me a long life.” The snake heard him and smiled. It winked. At that Circling Hawk stiffened. He tried to cry out, but could not. Then the snake entered Circling Hawk’s backbone and ate its way up into his skull. Presently it looked out of Circling Hawk’s left eye, smiling at No Name, winking, flicking its tongue. Strangely the snake’s tongue was not forked, but single, like the nose of a minnow. “Ahh,” No Name whispered in his dream, “it is wakan.”

Then he awoke. He lay half asleep for a while, full of wonder at the dream he had dreamed.

He turned on his left side. Lidded eyes almost closed, looking vaguely, he saw an arm of brownish flesh pouring slowly toward him across the hard lichen-covered rocks. It did not surprise him to see it. Its skin was flecked over with green, and it moved almost invisibly through the sparse clumps of buffalo grass. Blinking, still caught in the hypnotic hold of his dream, he recognized it as the male rattlesnake that had eaten its way up the backbone of Circling Hawk.

He spoke to it, gently, in a low cracked voice. “What is the message from Circling Hawk? What does he say?”

The brownish snake paused, then its arrow head slithered back, angling almost into a coil. Slowly its head lifted and its red tongue glittered in the sunlight. He saw that its tongue was forked. Only then did he see it was not the snake of his dream.

He was not frightened. Redbird had taught him that snakes were sacred animals, beloved by the Thunders, that they were sometimes even known to speak to men.

“Tell me, old father, what do they of the other world have to say? When will they bring me sight of my helper? My eyes are ready to see him.”

The snake blinked its dusty eyes.

“When will Wakantanka speak to me?”

The snake waited a moment, then slowly withdrew, sank from sight in a fissure of rock.

He lay in trance a long while, not quite looking at the sun, staring a little below it. This time it did not burn two holes in the back of his brain, though it filled his eyes with dancing boils of red light.

At last, almost beyond suffering, he raised open palms to the skies and murmured, “Father, I am not blameless, yet take pity on me. Give me a name. Do this and I will give you a scarlet blanket before all the people when I return to camp.”

His tongue felt thick. A fat turtle had crawled into his mouth. When he tried to speak the turtle ate up his words.

Moments slipped away as drops in a sliding waterfall. He did not see the sun set. His eyes gradually darkened over. He saw neither moon nor stars. All was black. He struggled to stay awake, yet slept much. He lay with his mouth open.

During the night a thunderhead rose in the west. It coasted in silently. When it was almost upon the butte it began to sprinkle the land with fat, finger-sized drops of rain. The big drops fell in irregular patterns. They moved up the slope and across the top of the butte. They moved to where he lay, drummed on the bones of his chest.

He lay suffering them, not quite aware of what was happening.

The sprinkling thickened into a heavy dropping rush of rain. Water streamed down his face. It fell into his mouth. It gathered in his throat. It was so sweet it made him cough. The cough awakened the turtle. It tried to back out of his mouth. Then he himself awoke some. He swallowed and the turtle became his tongue.

At that he became wide awake. He cried out. “Ai, I have taken water!” He clamped his lips shut, shook his head from side to side in torment. “Now they will not come.”

Like a great bumblebee the thunderhead dropped its tail, and let fly a dancing bolt of lightning. It speared into the south rim of the high butte. Dazzling fire seared the rock on all sides. The butte and all the land around rolled under the afterclap.

“Thunders, you have come!” he cried, electrified. “Thank you, thank you.” A series of vast rattling echoes raced away across the prairies. Immediately after, even heavier rain fell. It came across the butte top in lashing veils. The sage began to smell very sweet and fresh in the rain.

There were no more bolts of lightning. The great bumblebee cloud had but one sting in its tail. It moved on. Presently the rain let up.

“What have I done?”

A cold wind sprang from the west. It moaned off the prairies below.

“I drank unwitting.”

Stars came out. They twinkled brightly above him.

“Father, I am not blameless, yet take pity on me. I will give you a scarlet blanket before all the people when I return to camp. I will torment my body in the sun dance.”

The butte cooled under him. He heard water trickling over rocks. He felt a drop of rain trembling in the hollow of his upper lip. He dared not lick his lip for fear of touching the drop.

The stars moved west. The butte moved east.

He reached up and tried to finger the stars. He saw his finger tips move darkly amongst them but they did not quite touch them.

He lay stretched out. The little water he had accidentally swallowed in sleep had awakened desperate thirst in him. One moment his big toe moved, the next his eyeball. He fought off the thirst. He determined not to think of it. He composed himself.

“I await the morning,” he murmured. “Tomorrow is the fourth day of my fast. The fourth time is the sacred time. Tomorrow Wakantanka will send someone.”

He lay the night through in a dreamy, half-paralyzed state.

6

When the sun rose on the fourth morning, he discovered that his shadow soul and his flesh soul had become separated during the night. His shadow soul was happy that the fourth day had come at last. It was very eager to prepare for the coming of his guardian spirit. But when he tried to get up nothing happened. His arms and legs continued to sleep on the cold hard rock. His body lived by itself and no longer obeyed commands.

Then he saw his shadow get up by itself. It stood scowling in disgust at his sluggard body. Finally it turned to the morning sun and stretched itself leisurely in the yellow light. It began to dance in honor of the rising sun. From very far away he heard it sing:

He watched his shadow soul stroll along the edge of the butte top. It looked down on two sides, the yellow east and the blue north, and then came back to the red west side and stood looking down at him. It said, “Arise, take up thy flesh and prepare the place on the south side.”

His flesh roused. In a low faint voice it said, “Bring me water. I desire some. Bring me a corn cake from my mother’s big pot. I desire some.”

“What! would you give up the fast on the fourth day?”

“I am killed. I have to leave you.”

A look of sadness moved across the face of his shadow soul. Then a darkness entered his eyes and both voices fell silent.

He was roused by the sound of threshing winds just above. Gusts of beaten air bruised his face. Dust and sand whelmed up around him.

“It is the black whirlwind,” he thought. When the beating gust continued, he said in his mind to the whirlwind, “Go. Where you are going it is bad. Go by yourself.”

Instead a heavy weight settled on his chest.

“Ai, it is not the black whirlwind. It is the nightmare again. It comes to choke me.” He wept inwardly. “Now I will have to return to my people without the vision. It is crushing me so that I cannot breathe.”

The weight moved on him. Digging claws anchored down into his ribcase. Suddenly there was a terrible peck into his belly, then something sharp caught at his navel and tried to rip it up.

Opening his eyes, he saw a great bird perched on his chest. “Aii! it is the Thunderbird!” His wild cry made the great creature let go its bite and turn and look at him. It cocked piercing black eyes at him. Then he saw what it really was.

“Ai, it is a golden eagle. It thinks I am a fallen calf. It has come to rend me and feed its little ones.”

Sunlight burned in shivers of gold over the great bird’s thick brown feathers. The great bird stood on him larger than any
wolf he had ever seen. Again its proud beak turned and it looked down at him. Shifting heavy stalk feet, its black claws took a new hold on his ribcase.

“Are you my helper?” he asked, weakly.

The eagle spread out its wings, ruffled them majestically, resettled them, then looked at him in outraged amazement.

“Are you my guardian spirit?”

The eagle started, blinked, then spread its vast wings again, got set to fly off.

Then No Name’s flesh soul awakened. It turned into a wolf within him. It made his eyes blaze. Suddenly his arm sprang up and before the eagle could take off he seized it by the tail. The great bird screamed, harshly, brokenly, with a laugh like that of a maniac. It flapped its great wings, again, again, hard, until air rushed around them as in a whirlwind. The power of its beating wings lifted No Name to a sitting position. Yet his flesh soul hung on grimly.

“Do not go!” he cried. “Are you not my guardian spirit?”

Abruptly the feathers he had hold of parted from the eagle’s broad tail, and, released, the great bird shot up into the air.

He watched it go. He looked from the tail feathers in his hand to the bird rising in the sky. He scrambled to his feet and reached out after it, calling, “Come back, come back!” He watched the bird until it became as small as a hawk. It cut a curving line off to the northwest, became a speck in the blue morning sky, then was gone.

Amazed to find himself on his feet again, he cried, “I am not killed. My shadow soul has rejoined my flesh soul. Hi-ye! Thank you, thank you. Something wonderful is about to happen.” He danced a short morning salute to the sun.

Wavering, staggering some, carrying the red pipe, he moved to the pyramid of stones beside the gap on the south side. He looked down. He saw the circle of fallen stones below and the rosebushes between them and in the midst of them the two horses Lizard and Dusty, and then, narrowing his eyes, also Circling
Hawk. All three seemed to be looking up at him. He gave them the sign that all was well, holding his right hand against his heart, level, then swinging it outward.

He turned. He got down on hands and knees and cleaned off another foursquare place in the midst of loose shale and pebbles. He picked some silver sage stems and brushed away all the stray curdles of dirt. He found a crumbling dark stone and painted his face black a final time. Then he lay down, face up, head to the north and feet to the south.

“I am ready,” he said, “let it come.”

He dozed down into a vast wide calm. He felt himself arriving in a world where there was nothing but the spirit of all things. He saw it was the true world, the one behind the world of shadows he usually lived in. He now knew more things than he could tell.

A voice spoke. “Watch closely, twolegged one. There is something you shall see. Hey-hey-hey.”

He lay floating on a soft cloud.

And then, looking down, he saw it. Below, through the gap in the rimrock, lay a nest lodged in a circle of rocks. It was made of carefully chosen twigs and lined with white horsehair. The white skull and white bones of a buffalo lay in a litter to one side.

“Ha-ho! a mare’s nest,” he whispered. “I will watch to see if she returns before the nest becomes cold.”